People say that you should do something scary every day, but maybe you shouldn’t hold in a sneeze. For some people, holding in a sneeze can be dangerous because it can damage their windpipe or make their face swell up.

At the time this was written, the story about your eyes popping out of your head was still just an urban legend.

Not being able to sneeze: torn windpipe
If you have hay fever, the season is a bad time for you. Your eyes are wet, your throat hurts, and you can’t stop sneezing. One man was driving when these symptoms started to bother him. He decided it would be better to hold it in, so instead of sneezing, he pinched his nose and closed his mouth. It makes sense that you would want to keep your eyes open while driving, but your choice had a very bad side effect.

A short time after holding in his sneeze, the driver’s neck started to swell and hurt very badly. When he got to the emergency room, he could hear a crackling sound in his neck. An X-ray showed that he had surgical emphysema, which is an injury from trauma that lets air leak under the skin. What caused it? A tear in his windpipe. This is most likely the first instance of holding back a sneeze causing a tear like this.

Stopping to sneeze: Hamman’s sign
In a second case of crepitus post-holding in a sneeze, a 34-year-old man held his nose and mouth together to stop himself from sneezing and felt his neck “pop.” As soon as that happened, swallowing hurt and his voice changed, so he went to the doctor. Doctors could hear Hamman’s sign, which is a crackling sound that can happen when the heart beats on tissue that is full of air. After that, they got scans that showed the man had broken the back of his neck.

“Blocking your nose and mouth to stop sneezing is a dangerous move that you should avoid,” the case study authors wrote. “It may lead to numerous complications such as pneumomediastinum, perforation of the tympanic membrane, and even rupture of cerebral aneurysm.”

Holding in a sneeze: broken cheek
Holding in a sneeze can also make injuries worse. For example, a 38-year-old tried to hold in a sneeze and their right cheek swelled up. It turned out that they had been living with a fractured right maxillary sinus that hadn’t been diagnosed, which was causing subcutaneous emphysema of the face.

When people hold in their sneezes, these rare outcomes happen. They show that holding it in can hurt you. As The Conversation points out, holding in a sneeze can be dangerous because they can push air out of your body at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour).

Trying to hide a sneeze? Yes. Not letting one out? Stay away from that place.

In the spirit of strange neck injuries, have you ever noticed that some brass musicians have necks that bulge out like a bullfrog’s?

One of the most important things in the office is a simple mug. It’s there to hold your coffee in the morning when you need a pick-me-up, to show off your style with a cool pattern or funny joke, or to keep you warm when someone else is running the air conditioning. Though it cares about you, are you giving it the love and attention it needs? To put it another way, do you wash it often?

People on Reddit clean their coffee mugs in a lot of different ways. Some wash them every day, some just rinse them out between uses, and some like to let the flavors of all the drinks they’ve ever had mix.

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The results of a poll of more than 2,000 British adults were the same. A majority of people (those who were telling the truth) cleaned their office mugs after every use. However, many people went between uses without giving it a good scrub, and 3% admitted to never washing it at all. It’s even worse for Brits when it comes to washing towels.

That might be a problem if some nice, fluffy mold starts to grow, but the bacteria that live in a dirty mug aren’t always a problem.

An infectious disease expert, Dr. Jeffrey Starke, told the Wall Street Journal, “If I went and cultured the average dirty coffee cup, of course I’m going to find germs.” “Remember, though, that most of them came from the person who used the cup.”

What about the germs that don’t come from the person who owns the mug? The University of Arizona’s Dr. Charles Gerba is a professor of microbiology, environmental sciences, and public health. He told LifeHacker that “about 90% of most office coffee mugs harbor dangerous germs, and 20% of those carry fecal bacteria.”

If no one else in the office is getting ideas from Andy Samberg’s character’s antics in the “Like a Boss” music video, Starke and Gerba both say that any germs that might be in your mug might have come from… cleaning it.

“The sponge in the break room probably has the most bacteria of anything in the office,” Starke told the Wall Street Journal. That makes a lot of sense. It touches a lot of things, stays wet, and probably doesn’t get replaced very often. Starke came to the right conclusion when he said, “Most people would call that gross.”

That being said, it might seem better to not wash it at all, but a lot of people would find that idea gross. Soap, hot water, and paper towels are what experts say you should use to clean and dry your office mug. Even better, if you have a dishwasher, take it home and wash it there.

Some people say you should do it after every use, but we won’t tell if you don’t.

The epidemiologist who came up with the term says that ultra-processed foods are so bad for you that they should be sold with warnings like those on tobacco products.

Carlos Monteiro, a professor of Nutrition and Public Health at the University of São Paulo, told the Guardian that UPFs (ultra-processed foods) are becoming more popular around the world, even though they are bad for your health because they raise the risk of many chronic diseases.

According to him, these foods are replacing healthier, less processed foods all over the world. They are also making diets worse because they have many bad qualities. “These foods, along with others linked to diet, are causing a huge rise in obesity and other long-term diseases like diabetes.”

This week at the International Congress on Obesity 2024, Monteiro said that ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are so common and bad for people’s health that they should be heavily restricted in their sale and consumption, and foods that break the rules should have “front-of-pack warnings [like those used for cigarette packs]” added to them.

The idea seems reasonable at first glance, even if it is a bit extreme. Many people in the West now eat mostly UPFs. In fact, more than half of the average diet in the US and UK is made up of these kinds of foods. They make people eat more calories, even when compared to unprocessed diets that are the same in terms of salt, fat, and sugar. They have also been linked to a lot of bad health effects, like a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer. They can even make you feel less mentally healthy.

Monteiro has a good point when he says that UPFs should be seen as a public health risk, like tobacco products. Monteiro emphasized that multinational corporations that produce both tobacco and UPFs use the sizable profits they generate from creating alluring and addictive products to support aggressive marketing campaigns and lobbying against regulation. These products are also pathogenic, which means they are meant to be harmful. “Reformulating is not the answer.”

But some people have said that banning or limiting UPFs is too simple. One thing that might surprise you is the types of food that would be affected by such a move: “ultra-processed” only refers to foods that have multiple ingredients and additives. This includes baby formula, fruit yogurt, and even store-bought bread. Okay, so the fast-food hamburger you’re thinking of counts.

Poor people are also more likely to buy UPFs than rich people. «We already know that eating snacks and foods that are highly processed and high in sugar is linked to rising rates of obesity. “Socioeconomic differences in health and diet are also known,” said Paul Coleman in November 2023. Coleman was an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Food Policy, City, University of London, and a Senior Public Health Registrar at Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust.

More labels wouldn’t help these parents. Coleen said, “they know [UPFs] are bad for their child’s health, but they have little choice but to buy these unhealthy options.” Even though parents want to buy healthy snacks, unhealthy snacks are the most logical choice because they are cheap and last a long time.

Some scientists disagree with Monteiro’s comparison to tobacco products. Hilda Mulrooney, a reader in nutrition and health at London Metropolitan University, told The Guardian, “There is no such thing as a safe cigarette, even second-hand, so banning them is relatively straightforward in that the health case is very clear.”

“However, we need a variety of nutrients, such as fat, sugar, and salt. These nutrients do more than just taste, flavor and hedonic properties; they also help foods stay structurally stable and last longer,” she said. “Some types of foods are harder to change in order to make them less harmful, and they’re not the same as tobacco because we need food, just not as much as most of us eat.”

The World Obesity Congress 2024 takes place in São Paulo, Brazil, from June 26th to June 29th of that year.